365.328 up with the birds

Well, I didn’t get the nice blur from yesterday, but I did get the panorama I was looking for (in the outtake, anyway), so that must count for something.

I’ll count this as a win, even though there are some things in both pictures that would be better in the other picture, if that makes any sense… probably not: I’m not feeling it today, not much anyway.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed on 40mm extension. 7 pictures (but Photoshop only used 4) [365 pic], and 6 pictures (outtake): ISO200, 1/160th, f/2.5 or something (the Vivitar goes 1.8, click, click, 2.8, and it’s on that second click…). Both stitched via Photoshop CS6 Photomerge, tweaked slightly with some photo filters, cropped, and passed to Aperture, where they got maybe 1 minute of slider play each.

And since I just realized that good-old WordPress (or maybe this theme) crops the featured image, here’s the full width version:

and a bonus Outtake that I like to call “fly me to the…”:

 

365.327 Circles & Lines

So I made a really groovy 5 shot panorama of this feather, but Photoshop failed to autostitch yet again, and I don’t have the skill to put it together myself.

Oh well. It’s still pretty, and it still has lines, and its still macro, so gogo.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed on ~40mm extension. Less than 30 seconds of slider play in Aperture, after about 35 minutes of cussing at Photoshop…

365.326 mnommynommy veggie goodness

Obviously, I’m not a food photographer.

I am, however, an eater, though I tend to stay away from meat, gluten, refined sugar, and most processed foods, and I tend to eat the same things every day: for breakfast, 1/2 cup of Rice Chex mixed with 1/2 cup of an admixture of various nuts and dried fruits; for lunch, a pint of vegetarian tortilla soup; and nachos (homemade refried black beans and 3oz of shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese on top of some chips I make myself from corn tortillas) for dinner.

Today, I made the next month’s worth of soups that I’ll take to work and reheat for lunches.

This is a picture of the fresh ingredients: 3 small white onions, 4 green bell peppers, 1 red bell pepper, 1 yellow bell pepper, and 3 jalapenos with most of the seeds removed, all roughly chopped into chunks.

To this, I added 4 cubes vegetable bullion, 4 cubes NotChicken bullion, 12oz cumin, 2 Tablespoons crushed red pepper, 16oz tomato paste, 32oz diced tomatoes with green chilies, 32oz black beans, 16oz chick peas (to get some b6), and a small bag of frozen corn kernels.

I brought all this to a boil, simmered for an hour or so, divided and parceled out into 18 plastic bowls, and sent directly to the freezer.

I have no idea how this iteration tastes, because I never eat anything the day I make it… I hate leftovers and will not eat them, so by portioning out the soup and not tasting it, I’m able to fool my dislike of leftovers, because none of the soup is, strictly speaking, ‘leftover.’

While the soup will be yummy, I expect, this picture seems sadly lacking. Oh well… I might go off and tweak the colors to make that yellow pop a bit, as it looks to be going a bit green. If I do, I’ll share it as a re-do or outtake or something.

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron), in macro mode. ISO100, 1/25th (AP mode), f/3.5, -1EV, and, yes, this was handheld… About 2 minutes of slider play in Aperture.

the City Lights Photowalk (not even Thanksgiving yet)

Yesterday, the City of Dallas and/or Downtown Dallas, Inc. hosted its annual City Lights opening night festival,* and the North Texas Photography Explorers MeetUp Group was there in full effect.

Yesterday was November 17th. Thanksgiving is November 22nd. Christmas is December 25th.

The City shut down Main Street, between Griffin and Harwood, and there were craft and food booths, the Neiman Marcus ‘crawl tubes,’ buskers of various varieties, street karaoke, photo booths, photos with Santa, Darth Vadar and an entourage consisting of Storm Troopers and TIE Fighter Pilots and Bounty Hunters and Sand People, and lots and lots of family-type groups, couples, and packs of friends milling about.**

Insofar as I would very much like to get over my fears of shooting random strangers in the street*** I went and tried my best. I didn’t have a panic attack, or worry very much, but I also didn’t shoot many people, and felt creepy when I did, even though there were thousands of cameras of various sizes pointed in every direction and snapping away pretty much constantly.

I bought a pretzel, looking forward to that hot, salty, chewy, yumminess, but it was cold, doughy, and rather yuck.

There was a lengthy countdown to Santa’s arrival, seemingly patterned off of Felix Baumgartner’s parachute jump from the edge of space for Red Bull,**** an opening speech by the CEO of Downtown Dallas, a strange flying Santa with some sort of jet pack thing, a tree lighting, and fireworks.

I’m not quite sure what any of this had to do with Christmas, but have a fairly good idea of what it had to do with commerce.

This is not to say that it wasn’t nice to see all the smiling children and happy families and cheerful couples and laughing packs of friends.

Anyways. I have little practice with shooting street-type or people photos, let alone in the dark, so I experimented a bit, and ended up shooting in Shutter Priority most of the night., since I can comfortably hand-hold about 1/15th with the Sigma 30mm. Needless to say, I didn’t get much that I was happy with, and the pictures I’m sharing here were all taken in AP mode at f/2…

Everything was shot with the D7000 and Sigma 30mm f/1.4, ISO100, a variety of shutter speeds, f/2, -1EV, and most received several minutes of slider play in Aperture.

*yes, the City of Dallas, Texas has its own corporate entity. Thankfully, it appears to be a nonprofit concern…

**I didn’t see many single males in their late 20s or 30s, and the only older single men appeared to be homeless. This may have something to do with my trepidation, but I don’t really know.

***with a camera.

****whoever came up with that idea needs to find a new job.

365.325 Ohne Titel

Apologies for the delay in sharing yesterday’s 365 pic. I went on a photowalk with the North Texas Photography Explorers MeetUp Group to the City of Dallas’s annual City Lights opening night.

A few photos from the festivities, as well as a rant about ‘not even #@%*%&@ Thanksgiving yet’ to follow, though I didn’t get much that I was happy with.

Shooting random strangers is not my forte; shooting random strangers in the dark, even less so.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO800, 1/15th, f/1.6 (Shutter Priority), -1EV. A crop to square to remove a massive black hole on the right, and about 4 minutes of slider play in Aperture.

365.324 morning stroll (AKA “I was walking like a ghost”)

I woke up insanely early this morning, and rather than surf the internets randomly, I decided to go on into work and try to make a 365 pic before work again.

During the drive, I decided on a small aperture/long exposure, ghost walker shot, and I guess I got what I asked for.

But this picture (and the other 7 I shot) look very odd to me. Cold. Like the lighting/picture quality on those bad sci-fi shows from the late 1990s and early 2000s, maybe. Sort of slicker than anything else out there, smoothed over. Very Very Digital, and in that very unreal way that digital sometimes is.

It sorta creeps me out.

And I didn’t quite get what I wanted out of the picture, or the composition or anything, so I’m glad I get to go into work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll try it again, though it would probably be better to wait until Monday, when I’ll have dark pants and a dark(er) shirt on (likely).

I do like the lens flare and the sunstars, though, so I guess that counts for something.

I thought of compositing all the ghost walkers into one scene, but the camera (resting on top of the car) was never in the same place from one shot to the next, and so matching up parking lines and leaf litter would be nightmarish.

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO100, 10 seconds (AP mode), f/8. About 15 minutes of effing around in Aperture: burning and increasing contrast in the shadows and the ghost; fixing (sorta) the colors (my shirt today was a powder blue, not a purple); and trying to un-digital the image (I ended up just giving up).

365.323 Ohne Titel (at the Drive-In)

Rather than fight fatigue and time after work to make the 365 picture, today I left a bit early, and snapped a few frames before work instead. If the exif is to be believed, this was shot at 5:30:02am, but don’t believe the exif, as I always set clocks a few minutes fast, and the camera was back in the bag and the three of us had made our way across 100meters of parking lot, down 25m of sidewalk, and were in the building waiting for 5:30am (when the suite doors unlock) to arrive at 5:28am.

Anyways, it worked out fairly well, as I have plenty of time now to do… whatever, and still get an early dinner and an early bedtime. Hooray!

D7000. Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO100, 1.6 seconds (AP mode), f/1.4, -1EV. About 45 seconds of slider play in Aperture.